Jeremy L. Dillon
RW Monitor
1/10/2014
Kurion has entered into an agreement with the United Kingdom’s National Nuclear Laboratory to provide bulk vitrification waste treatment at the NNL’s Central Laboratory at the Sellafield site, according to a joint release issued by the NNL and Kurion this week. The joint project will use Kurion’s GeoMelt waste treatment technology as the basis for an In-Container Vitrification plant. “This is a partnership with NNL that we have been working on for most of 2013 culminating in the agreement from the joint release,” Kurion CEO Bill Gallo told RW Monitor this week. “The NNL is a fantastic facility for the treatment of radioactive waste and demonstration of technologies of all classifications. It is a world-class, brand-new, absolutely state-of-the-art facility. We are just delighted that NNL has set aside space in the facility for deployment of our GeoMelt technology. We are very excited at the prospect of using this platform at NNL in order to eventually treat some of the more critical waste at the Sellafield site and also from other sites around the complex,” Gallo said.
The major waste that Kurion plans on treating with the GeoMelt technology consists of orphaned waste, waste that did not previously have a disposal pathway. “The GeoMelt plant at Sellafield creates a platform to evaluate the vitrification technology for the variety of wastes at the site and creates a treatment path for small, problematic waste streams that currently have no disposition pathway,” Brett Campbell, vice president of GeoMelt Technologies for Kurion, said in a release.
The use of thermal processing has gained steam recently in the U.K. as a way of treating waste in a manner that maximizes consolidation. “For some time, grout has been the primary stabilization vehicle for Sellafied,” Gallo said. “There has been a realization, I think, within the NDA and at Sellafield that thermal processing is not only good, but also in some case, necessary for stabilization of certain waste streams. I would say as part of that realization that this technology and this deployment is part of that realization for thermal processing of certain waste streams.”
The time table for getting the facility up and running should happen fairly quickly, according to Gallo. “We are starting immediately with the deployment of our technology, our kit, if you will, in Rig Hall at NNL,” he said. “Fortunately, the system we are going to build there is a system we currently have in Birchwood in the UK. So for us, it’s a matter of disassembling and moving the existing system into the new facility. I expect it to be fully operational in the second quarter.”
Growth Movement
The NNL agreement is part of larger plan for Kurion to grow as a company, and it should provide credibility to the technology, especially in the United States and Europe, Gallo said. “I think we have significant credibility already from our work done at Fukushima,” Gallo said. “What this does, is this gives us a foothold in the UK.” Gallo also highlighted the potential relevance of the technology at the Hanford site. “We feel that there is relevance at Hanford, especially when you look at, for example, the 618-711 trenches,” he said. “We think they are relevant for this technology. We have interests at Hanford as well as the rest of the world.”
Gallo expects the company to have “significant growth” in the coming year. “Absolutely, we plan to get bigger as a company,” Gallo said. “We are moving forward in four growth areas at the moment. One is in Japan, where we continue to grow and develop new technologies and bring those to the benefit of TEPCO and the benefit of Japan. The second is with the Department of Energy, specifically, starting with Hanford, where Kurion has established our technical base in Richland, and then also in the UK and in Europe. We are moving on all those fronts, we are growing on all those fronts, and we expect significant growth this year,” he said.
EnergySolutions Lawsuit Continues
Gallo also provided an update in the legal battle between EnergySolutions and Kurion over a waste treatment technology. “We continue to work through the legal process,” he said. “We have defended ourselves and continue to defend ourselves, and in fact, we have also taken some initiatives to establish the proper venue for the proceedings and hope to have this resolved certainly this year. I will also say that in the meantime virtually all of our focus is on growing the business and moving it forward.”
EnergySolutions has been challenging Kurion’s use of a treatment process that removes radioactive isotopes from liquid using isotope specific media followed by vitrification of the separated isotopes with the media. EnergySolutions claims Kurion Vice President Mark Denton worked for them on this technology, but he did not file a patent until after he left the company. EnergySolutions first filed suit against Kurion in Utah, asking that the patent be assigned to them and that Denton be kept from working for Kurion for one year, but the court there dismissed that case over a jurisdictional issue. The company’s second lawsuit, filed in the New York state court in late September, was similar to its initial suit against Kurion, but earlier this month, EnergySolutions pulled the suit again. The suit finally settled in two different venues, New York state court and South Carolina state court, where it currently resides.
